Francis Assa mentioned a link between 'Vladimir' and 'Victor,' though I'm unsure whether or not he was saying that Vladimir can actually be translated as Victor.  In any case, this possible link reminded me of a passage in Chapter One of Speak, Memory, where VN tells the story of his baptism:

 

"I was given a tremendously invigorating shock. As if subjected to a second baptism, on more divine lines than the Greek Catholic ducking undergone fifty months earlier by a howling, half-drowned half-Victor (my mother, through the half-closed door, behind which an old custom bade parents retreat, managed to correct the bungling archpresbyter, Father Konstantin Vetvenitski)..."

 

Are we to understand from this passage that Vladimir was almost baptized as Victor? And would this mistake have likely been a result of the archpresbyter making the natural association between the two names in his own head? Or I am reading the passage incorrectly?

 

If there is a relationship b/w this story and Pnin's Victor, it goes unmarked by Barabtarlo in his terrific Pnin annotations (sadly out-of-print).

 

Matt Roth